First off, Happy Holidays everyone! We'll all be taking a short break while we enjoy the holidays but we might jump in every now and then to answers comments and such. I hope you all have a good time during the next several days and get lots of cool stuff!

Speaking of getting cool stuff, we here at Sam & Dan Games would like to give you guys a small gift of our own; the first release of HTD! Yay! Now you may have noticed the title "Pre-Alpha v0.001." This is pretty accurate. In other words this is like the very beginnings of HTD's physical form. For those of you who haven't been following the HTD's posts you might play this be wonder where the rest is. We've done a lot of stuff but as with most big projects the inital stage of development takes a lot of time in order to build the foundation and set things up for everything else to follow. You guys have been very helpful in that process with giving us feedback and we plan to continue asking for it every step of the way. This early release being one of those steps.

This version is basically just a demo survival map with some basic, core functions of the game. You have to protect the character with no armor (we don't have armor done for them yet :P) for as long as you can. Eventually you'll get overrun but it's a good testing ground for trying things out as we continue to add stuff. There are no profiles, leveling up, choosing skills, or manually triggering skills but they'll be coming soon.

While there isn't much there right now, this is our starting point, and from now on we'll be releasing updates for HTD as often as we can. There's a lot to come and we'll be asking the community for ideas and suggestions on a regular basis. Everything from quest ideas to weapon concepts to level designs. We have plenty of our own ideas but it's not like we can think of everything and having you guys help out is a great resource. Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD is one way you can voice your opinion on such things. He puts up art related polls and asks for feedback on stuff he's currently working on as well as answers questions you guys might have for him.

So play around with this early release, see what you think, and let us hear your feedback in the comments! Have fun and Happy Holidays!

-Dan

Hey guys! It's been a long time coming but we are finally at the release for Hero Tower Defense! I'm pretty much going to repeat most of what Dan said! The game is really early, but I hope you guys can see what is there and use your imagination to see where the game is going to go. Some small things that aren't mentioned is that you can use the arrow keys to move the map and the "-" and "+" to zoom in and out. I wanted to thank Kevin (our artist) for doing such a great job! Thanks pal! I also want to thank Dan for answering all the SnD Coin emails and for taking over the design of HTD! ;P My family and girlfriend (they probably won't read this) but I thank them for all the support, letting me spend all this time on the computer! Lastly I want to thank you guys for such a great year, I say this a lot but I always mean it that without you guys we wouldn't be here right now releasing this game. I hope you guys have a good Christmas and New Years. See you guys in 2012!As always let us know what you think!-Sam

New Multiplayer Map - Multiplayer gets an upgrade, more paths, more choices.

New Achievements - Go back to older gyms and win special shadow pokemon.

New Level Cap to 72 - Getting close to 100!

New Mystery Gift Elf Avatar! - Thanks Kimmy Lube!

New Daily Gift Prizes! - Snd Coins and Shadow pokemon have been added to the prize list!

New Game Corner Prizes - Shadow Pokemon have been added to the prize list!

New Ability - Added Guts to the game, more will come in future updates.

Shadow Pokemon! - Added a shadow pokemon a new kind of rare pokemon to collect, exclusively available in the game corner and daily gift. They earn experience at a lower pace and can learn an exclusive TM Shadow Rush.

Hey guys! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I'm happy to say that almost everything has been added for this update. The layout will be coming this week along with the new features. Let's talk a little bit about Shadow Pokemon.

Shadow pokemon are meant to be like an anti-shiny. You can't catch them in the wild, you can't buy them with SnD coins and they get less experience per kill. You can get them by completing certain achievements, buying a random one in the game corner or winning one in the daily gift prize. This prevents them from being hackable and it also encourages trading any repeated shadow pokemon with other players. Many have been wondering which pokemon you can get in shadow form. Well pretty much any pokemon that you can get in the game will have a shadow version. This include shadow mew, raikou, entei, suicune, and victini! Also every shadow pokemon has the same chance of showing up. Many of you have asked for me to add new moves and different mechanics from the pokemon video games that came out with shadow pokemon but that was never my intent. These shadow pokemon are just special, they don't need to be cleansed... on this game... Also these pokemon retain their type and they have STAB with their original type. Their only shadow move "Shadow Rush" has the advantage of hitting every type as normal effectiveness.

Other than that this week is going to be about getting Hero Tower Defense out! Because of this my weekly progress will be about different things in HTD. So expect HTD to come out before the 25th and then the week after that I will be taking a break to just spend time with loved ones in bringing in the New Year.

I'll be fleshing out this list as the week goes on.

New Pokemon Center Layout and Features (70%)Trading my pokemon from my account samO (100%)Adding a new pokemon for trade (100%) - Shadow Victini!Finish the first HTD version (100%)

I hope you guys are enjoying your holiday break and as always let me know what you think and thanks for sticking by us!

Today I want to go over Native Skills (NS). I apologize in advance for all the abbreviations I'm about to use. :)

So what are NS? NS are skills that you start with and require no points. Each character will have one Native Elemental Skill (NES) and one Native Class Skill (NCS). There are 5 different NES, one for each elemental. The NES you end up with is determined by the character's native element. They are kind of like a racial traits but instead of being based on the character's race they are based on the character's native element instead. The NCS on the other hand is the same for every character. You'll see why in a moment.

All NES are ranged direct damage skills, there's no projectile and not based on your weapon, it just instantly hits. They all have a some sort of duration based effect (e.g. DoT, Buff, etc) and are stackable up to 5 times, each time increasing it's effects and renewing the duration. It's also worth noting that these skills can be used on allies as well. Also, NES are unique in that they are able to generate elemental charges around your character. These charges can be used various ways which I'll explain later.

As a reminder, attunements are a unit's resistance and effectiveness with each elemental's skills.

Now for the charges. For every NES use that character will receive a charge of that elemental type. So since the NES is linked to your native element it means that characater can only produce that type of charge. Every character can hold up to 5 charges each charge increases the characters attunement corresponding to the type of charge. So if it's a fire charge, it'll increase your fire attunement, etc. The charges are consumed by Finisher skills (FS). These skills require at least one charge but will consume whatever charges you currently have stored. Each charge will increase the FS power to varying degrees depending on the type of the FS and the type of the charges consumed. So for example, if you have 5 fire charges and you use a fire FS it's power will be boosted a lot. If you have 5 water charges and you use a fire FS you won't get much of a boost at all because water counters fire.

There's one FS with the exception to this rule and that's the NCS all classes start out with that I mentioned earlier. The NCS is a FS that lets you transfer whatever charges you have available to another unit. So now you can have a character with one native element holding the charges of another element, it just requires some team work. This also means that you can have a mix of charge types on a character since you can hold up to 5 charges.

This brings up one other point. Say you do a charge transfer and the receiving target goes over the limit of charges they can hold, or perhaps they already are full and you transfer for to them, what happens? Well, first it will check to see if there's any charge spots available and fill those then whatever are left will do a type check against the other elemental charges and either replace them or get countered. Here's a couple simple examples:

1. You transfer 5 water charges to a character with 5 fire charges - all the fire charges get replaced by the water charges. So the target ends up with all water charges.

2. You transfer 5 water charges to a character with 2 fire charges and 2 shadow charges - one water charge gets added, the two fire charges are replaced by two water charges while the 2 shadow charges remain because shadow counters water. So the target ends up with 3 water charges and 2 shadow charges.

I sounds more complicated than it actually is but these NS are meant to be important and used strategically and not just as a "Click skill, do damage" type of move. At the very beginning you'll be using them constantly just because you won't have many other moves to choose from but their importance will remain high throughout the game. This also allows for some interesting stuff to do with strategies for general attacks, boss encounters, level objectives, etc so expect to see some fun things going on in the future.

Well that was a bit long but fun to write! On a side note we're all working hard to have as much ready for the upcoming release as possible. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again just to keep everyone on the same page. This release is basically a prototype of what we have physically developed so far. Design and concept is the majority of what we've been doing so far and so we've only just begun to start physically developing the game into something. But we promised to give you guys something as soon as possible and we want to hear your feedback every step of the way so we're showing you what's essentially a just-started, pre-alpha, v0.0001, right-out-of-the-gates release. So just keep that in mind please. :D

Kevin also has a new poll up on his blog, KXN @ HTD for choosing Male Hairstyles so head over there and be sure to cast your vote!

As always, let us hear what you have to say in the comments and thanks!

Hey guys, nice to see you again! Do you come here often? Anyways.. enough small talk, let's get straight to the action! I've received a lot of good feedback for the new level and new achievement, so I'm glad you guys enjoyed that. The closer we get to New Years and Christmas the harder it is to complete updates. So many presents to buy, so many games to play, and events to go to! But don't worry here at Sam and Dan Games we won't let you down, even if things come out a little late, they will arrive!

This week we will be doing a new multiplayer map that will replace the old one. Because let's be honest the old one is LAME! So I hope you guys will enjoy it. Along with that will come the new layout for the Pokemon Center that I think a lot of you will enjoy, it's been a long time coming but thanks to Velocity, we have it ready to go and should be up this week. Along with the new layout we will have new improvements, using magical technologies like AJAX (Google it, if you are curious), you will be able to see what the user requested for his trade without having to leave the search results page. On top of that I will adding other features that have been asked for a lot during our time here.

ON TOP OF THAT! We will have new daily gift prizes, new game corner prizes, new abilities, new achievements and new level cap!

Change Seaking's attack in Route 12 from Soak to Aqua Ring to prevent flying pokemon from being able to go in the flying only spots (100%) Added the Ability Keen Eye to Hitmonchan (100%) Fix issue with Shadow pokemon showing up as shiny when learning a new move or evolving (100%) - Thanks everybody that let me know :)Lowering the amount of energy the attacker gets in the multiplayer map (100%)

PTD First look is below! Check it out!

That's what we have for now, let me know what you think and keep coming back to see our progress and PTD First Look by Graphic Force. Thanks!

So for this post I'm going to take a small break from posting a game progress update in order to ask you guys a question.

We definitely have a lot of ideas for HTD and you guys have given us a lot of help with those ideas. You've also given us some great new ideas as well. This is all very helpful to us and even though the first version of the game will basically be at the prototype, pre-alpha, v0.01 stage in development we look forward to hearing your feedback on that as well. This will just help us a lot because you'll be able to get your hands on it and tell us what you like or dislike right from the beginning while the game is still wide open for changes.

This is all to say that your comments, suggestions, ideas, and feedback in general is very useful to us. In a past post I asked what game references you guys might like to see in the game and I found those suggestions to be quite helpful and ended up with a large list of good suggestions. So I wanted to call upon our fans again and ask you guys to think of some game mechanics that either you've thought of yourself or you've seen elsewhere and then pick one that you'd really like to see in HTD. For example, something like siege weapons that you can build and place like towers or maybe housing for your characters, etc. Just try to limit it to one suggestion though because I know a lot of you have a bunch of ideas but give me the one game mechanic you want the most. Also try to think about how it'll work in HTD's TD/RPG gameplay. It's ok if it's already been mentioned before because nothing is 100% at this point and things can always change. Plus, if lots of people want the same thing then this will let us know.

So let us hear your suggestion/idea for your most wanted game mechanic in the comments. I look forward to reading your responses! Also, Kevin has a new poll up on his blog, KXN @ HTD for choosing Male Hairstyles so head over there and cast your vote!

Removed Shiny Horsea that are hacked, and then adding Shiny Horsea for adoption

First version of Multiplayer - First map, premade teams, can't change moves, randomly either attack or defend, attackers win if they carry the old rod back. Attackers have 1000 energy to use. Defenders win if they don't let the attacker carry the old rod back and the attacker is out of energy. Winning or losing has no rewards or penalties.

Put a new pokemon up for trade on my Account samO - Shiny Horsea is now up for trade on my samO account!

Added new moves to the Pokemon Center Move List

Removed odd looking reflection on pokeball on the main menu - It looked funny, ;)

WE MADE IT! Well almost... Multiplayer v1 is now up and ready to play. But I will be the first to say that while it's okay it's nowhere near what it should be. The reality is that one week is not enough to build a multiplayer feature. The fact that I got it working to this point is really a miracle. Just to make an example the first version of PTD took me 5 months of work on and off to just have about 11 pokemon, even less moves, level cap at 10, and only 3 levels. Multiplayer is a whole other beast, you have to deal with latency, match making, trying to keep the games in sync. Instead of saying hey it's not done please wait another week, I got to a good stopping point and released it as it was. So the way I see it multiplayer can only get better. But I've had worries about being able to keep it up for free and for all players. Well.. I have good news!

Thanks to our great sponsor we will be able to have free multiplayer for everybody! With one condition! That the multiplayer is exclusive to his website. So while you can still play here for the story mode, and challenge mode, the multiplayer will take you to the playtowerdefense.com website to play there. A small price to pay for getting your multiplayer for free!

In other news, like you guys know I always enjoy hearing from you guys and letting you guys experience the content as soon as possible. My friend GraphicForce suggested an idea of having a preview youtube video of what the weekly update will have, and I agreed. So each week GraphicForce will make a video previewing whatever is new on the update for that week before the update comes out. Click here to see the first PTD First Look!

In other other news, you guys decided what I should work on this week! The winners are story mode level and more achievements. So let's start there.

Version 5.2 is now available in the blog, with new mystery gift avatar and apk,swf,exe v5.2.1 coming out on Monday! Enjoy!

Story Mode Level (100%) - After saving Meowth and defeating Sabrina you must now train against your past opponents. Can you get past them?

New Achievements (100%)New Mystery Gift (100%)New Pokemon up for trade on my account samO (0%)Deciding who will get my Shiny Horsea from trade (0%)Adding new moves into pokemon center move list (100%)Fix abilities text being messed up when you pause the game (100%)It is no longer possible to have space or special characters in the avatar chat room (100%)It is no longer possible to have 2 people with the same name in the avatar chat room (100%)The chat will no longer scroll automatically if you have scrolled up to read something, if you are scrolled all the way down the chat will still scroll automatically (100%)Making multiplayer point to the PlayTowerDefense Website (100%)Creating a new database to hold user data, the current ones are getting filled (0%)

I will keep updating the blog with the progress so keep coming back for more. As always let me know what you think! Top 10 questions will come back for next week.

Alright, in this weeks post I want go into weapons and how they may differ from eachother.

In HTD we plan to have many different types of weapons that players can choose from to fit their style. These, of course, won't all be available right at the first release but we'll be releasing more and more as we continue with development. The term "weapons" in this case also includes things like shields and trinkets that you can hold. There will be one-hand and two-hand versions of all nearly all the different types of weapons. I say "nearly all" because there are some exceptions like shields which are usually only one-handed and polearms which are typically only two-handed.

The weapons will be broken up into a few general categories and than branch from there. Here's a list of what we're thinking for some of those categories with their type of weapons:

Light Melee: lighter and faster, close-range weapons

- Daggers, Shortswords, Small Axes and Maces, etc

Heavy Melee: heavier and slower, close-range weapons

- Polearms, Longswords, Large Axes and Maces, etc

Light Ranged: lighter and faster, long-range weapons

- Bows, Small Guns and Throwing Weapons, etc

Heavy Ranged: heavier and slower, long-range weapons

- Crossbows, Large Guns and Throwing Weapons, etc

Fist: Varying sizes and speeds, close-range weapons

- Knuckledusters, Bos (Sam: What's a bos?), etc

(Bos - It's a super secret weapon! :) No, actually I guess the plural version is actually just Bo, aka Bō. Like a Bo Staff and other stick weapons.)

Magical: Varying sizes and speeds, long-range weapons

- Wands, Staves, etc

Light Shields: Smaller and lighter, off-hand weapons

- Bucklers, Heater Shields, etc

Heavy Shields: Larger and heavier, off-hand weapons

- Kite Shields, Tower Shields, etc

Trinkets: Various sized, off-hand weapons

- Scrolls, Books, Magical Globes, etc

The weapons in each of these categories is affected by certain character stats differently. For example, Heavy Melee Weapons will benefit from high Strength and some Dexterity whereas Magical Weapons will rely mostly on Intelligence and only a little on Dexterity.

Another thing is we'll probably have equipment slots for 1H/2H Close-range Weapons, 1H/2H Long-range Weapons and your character may swap between them automatically depending on the distance of the closest enemy. So if there's an enemy unit coming towards your warrior character he won't just be sitting there waiting for the unit to come within melee range. Instead he'll auto-switch to his ranged weapon and use that till it gets closer or another enemy gets closer. This also helps prevent your warrior character from just getting out-ranged by an enemy unit that is attacking him constantly from a distance.

We're also thinking about having weapons be a bit customizable in some way so you can gear it more towards your character's style. Things like tradeskills will certainly provide some other possibilities as well. Either way, we'll have tons of weapons eventually and any suggestions you guys make will be helpful as always. Even some of your own designs could certianly make it into the game and would help Kevin out greatly.

Speaking of Kevin, check out his blog, KXN @ HTD to see some additional HTD art and be sure to participate in any polls he has going because that helps us know what you guys want first. Also here's a fitting image of some weapons:

HTD Weapons

Be sure to leave use any feedback and suggestions you guys might have, it's greatly appreciated and very helpful to us, thanks!

Hey guys! Thanks guys for making this birthday really stand out for me, I had a lot of fun and took some time to rest and relax with friends and family. Now it's back to business. Not much to say other than Multiplayer is what's coming next and that I'm going to put 100% on getting it done. Like I mentioned before Multiplayer like everything else in the game will be a work in progress. We will start with one map and premade teams for everybody while I slowly but surely add more moves and maps to it. There is also the issue of bandwidth but we will be playing that by ear and see what happens. There is a chance that I will have to shut it down if the bandwidth gets out of control but if we can keep it free that would be wonderful. I want to add moves that are missing for Victini, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune. Also raise the cap to 70 which will require a couple moves. I know it's been some weeks but bare with me, I will get this done!

v5.1 is now out on the blog. Blog post on monday for official release! Enjoy!

Level cap to 70 (100%)

New Moves (100%)

Me First (100%) - Mew

Change level cap in game (100%)

Change level cap in saving code (100%)

Implement new level cap in Trading Center (100%)

Missing Moves for Victini, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune (100%)

Lava Plume (100%) - Entei

Searing Shot (100%) - Victini

Incinerate (100%) - Victini

Endure (100%) - Victini

Flame Charge (100%) - Victini

V-create will be learned at level 98 for Victini.

Fusion Bolt will be learned at level 99 for Victini.

Fusion Flare will be learned at level 100 for Victini.

Adding Seadra and Horsea properly to the Pokedex (100%)Removing Shiny Horsea that are hacked, and then adding Shiny Horsea for adoption (100%)Multiplayer (100%) - First map, premade teams, can't change moves, randomly either attack or defend, attackers win if they carry the old rod back. Attackers have 1000 energy to use. Defenders win if they don't let the attacker carry the old rod back and the attacker is out of energy. Winning or losing has no rewards or penalties. Putting a new pokemon up for trade on my Account samO (100%) - Shiny Horsea is now up for trade on my samO account!Added new moves to the Pokemon Center Move List (100%) Removed odd looking reflection on pokeball on the main menu (100%) - :)

Top 10 Forum Questions of the Week!

1. Xehanorto: How do you plan to handle the water routes later in the game? Route 12 was easy as it had the bridges, but for the Seafoam Island routes it will be difficult.That's a really good question, I don't really know the answer to that right now. They might require a pokemon with surf to travel them or I might give you a boat or something to travel in.

2. Robert Conley: Do you have any plans to add more speed multipliers to the game?No, I think what we have is fine. Any faster and you might as well just give out free leveling and free shinies.

3. Ayso24: What would you say is your main motivation for creating such a fantastic Tower Defense game? And one with Pokemon no less? Are you just a HUGE fan of Pokemon or was it an idea that you thought might just work? Is it the fans or the joy in making something that actually is of great quality that pushes you for greater heights in PTD awesomeness?I'm a huge original Pokemon fan, I haven't played all the recent ones as much. Creating games is more fun for me than playing them. I've been wanting to make a pokemon game for a while but too afraid of getting shut down and with this one I just went with it. At this point in the game the fans are really the big motivation to finishing it. I feel that I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish but obviously it's not completed yet. Without fans I wouldn't finish this game.

4. gogogogo99: Well since your delaying shiny hunt and reimplementing the old way, I got a new question, will there still be a dogs quest? The reason you said there would was because you took out the dogs and shinies, is there still a dogs quest even though they are still in the wild?I don't think there will be dog quest. I don't want every player to get a dog. If every player pays for a dog then I can live with that lol.

5. Miss X: You've added the avatar chat. What will be the next step towards multiplayer?Next step is what's happening this week, which is the first map with pre made teams.

6. Ninja God: How many Mews and how many dogs exist in the game? Or if you don't wanna go that specific, Which are there more of?I think they are pretty close with dogs edging Mew out. It's close cause Mew has been around a lot longer and but dogs have more since you can get them in the daily code.

7. awesome2awesome/Link: To not be boring the heck outta veterans of PTD by doing repeats of mystery avatars, can you put a section in the avatar store in which the previous mystery gift items will be bought? For example in the game corner, so that newer players can obtain them as well?Yeah, I doubt I'll revisit old Mystery Gifts and try to include the avatars in different spots.

8. Ninja God: Could you possibly make it so that there is a send all pokemon to profile button on trade center?Yes, all in due time.

9. Do you plan on adding Waterfall as an HM or only is it only going to be learnable by Goldeen and Seaking? Probably add it as an HM at some point.

10. Grim Reaperchu: Will we be able to catch any legendaries more than once?One per profile. Three per account.

Go to our forums to submit your questions that may show up here on the blog!

That's what I have for you this week, expect me to update this more often this week, and as always let me know what you think!

Today is just a small update since it's Thanksgiving. I just wanted to give a brief rundown of our progress and some changes.

First, a reminder about the HTD day change. Sam was posting the PTD post later in the week at first but recently has been posting it on Monday because it works out better with his current scheduling of the weekly PTD update. Having the PTD post on Monday then immediately having the HTD post on Tuesday squishes things together. To remedy the problem we're going to change things a bit and have the PTD post on Monday and the HTD post on Thursday to have a better spread on the blog.

Next up I just want to say we're making pretty good progress on HTD and should make the late December release date as planned. We have some additional maps (the cave is multi-level) in the works by Kevin, Sam is adding more mechanics and features, and I'm working on the design of various things including the Tier 1 elemental and class moves and audio. So things are moving along nicely!

Hello! Welcome to the weekly PTD blog, it's a day late but better late than never. What started off as a small update to give me time for multiplayer became something HUGE! As you can see above I tried to kill off as many little bugs as possible. (There are still a bunch running around!) Game Bugs are funny, because for as many that you squash, many more appear when you add more new content. That's life for you.

As you might or might not know the plan is to have a multiplayer map available for the next update. You can read a lot more about it on the previous PTD blog. I'm not sure when the update will be done, there is much to code, design, and test before it can come to light and last week I didn't even get to start on it. This week is even more difficult due to the Thanksgiving here in the states. Also my birthday is this Saturday, so you can say that I will be busy this week besides working on the update. I will try my best but I'm not sure when it will be done.

Speaking of Birthdays! So instead of asking you guys for a gift (I want a jet plane! lol jk) I want to give you guys a gift for just being awesome and supporting us here. I can't decide on what to give you guys so I will make a poll as usual. The gifts I have in mind are:

Added Raikou, Entei, and Suicune's level up attacks and relearn attacks (100%) - Any attacks that were not in the game yet have not been added. For example Entei's Lava Plume. Those will be added next week along with Victini's moves.Bug Fixes (100%)

When a shiny shows up highlight the speed back to 1x (100%)

Change the background color of fainted pokemon so that it doesn't match the leveling up color (100%)

That's all I have for now, have a fun week, as always let me know what you think! Sam out! I will let you guys get first this time :D

Today I'd like to officially announce HTD's release date, which some of you may already know about. Then I'll discuss some thoughts on the armor in the game and HTD's day change.

First, I would like to announce that we've decided to shoot for a HTD release date of late December. Keep in mind this will be like version 0.1. In other words, it'll just have some of the core mechanics and other things for you to play around with. We like to release the games when they are very early in development in order to give you guys as many chances as possible to participate in helping us make the game. This also helps us to gather feedback every step of the way. So I hope everyone is looking forward to it as much as we are!

Now onto the armor. I just want to clarify that I'll be talking about armor specifically, not accessories like rings or trinkets or weapons. We'll definitely have those as well but that'll be a different post.

Armor will certainly play a large role in HTD. After all, everyone likes gearing up their characters with new armor, acquiring new loot, and sometimes even just collecting sets. We intend to have a lot of armor in the game of all types. It won't all be available right from the start of course but we'll be trying to add some every update.

As I mentioned before there will be various types of armor but they'll generally fall into light, medium, and heavy categories. However, everyone will be able to wear them, it's just a matter of what stats you end up getting from the armor. Generally the defense values of these armors will correlate to their type, i.e. lighter armors have lower defense and heavier armors have higher defense.

There will certainly be more stats than just defense on armors. Since everyone is able to wear the armors, and your class being dynamic to how you spend your skill points, it means you can have classes like a monk who might wear cloth and a battlemage who might wear plate. So not all cloth will be geared towards casters and not all plate will be geared towards warriors.

Here's a list what we have in mind for the armor pieces the characters will have:

Helm

Shoulders

Chest/Arms

Gloves

Legs

Boots

Most (if not all) of these pieces will change cosmetically on your character as well. We know some people like having the option of disabling the helm graphic but still having it equipped so we'll have that for sure.

Here's a cool sketch from Kevin showing his concept of the Human Male in Cloth Armor:

Now about the HTD day change. Sam was posting the PTD post later in the week at first but recently has been posting it on Monday because it works out better with his current scheduling of the weekly PTD update. Having the PTD post on Monday then immediately having the HTD post on Tuesday squishes things together. To remedy the problem we're going to change things a bit and have the PTD post on Monday and the HTD post on Thursday to have a better spread on the blog. We already have this HTD post for this week so the next one will be on Thursday of next week.

So on that note I give you, HTD Thursdays! :P

All feedback is welcome and encouraged! You guys are a lot of help so be sure to let us know of any suggestions or ideas you have in the comments and thanks for all your help thus far!

New Story Level - Saffron City - Hurry and get Maruto to the hospital!New Mystery Gift Alakazam Avatar!Shinies are back in the wild! - Shinies are back in the wild just like they used to be, the shiny popup will show up just like before and will stay on until you click on it.Went back and made the game less grindy for new players - Each level has bonus exp for pokemon under a certain level. If you pokemon training on that level is under the bonus cap then he will receive twice the experience.Added Zoom In and Out - After countless request Zooming In and Out is now in the game.You can now choose from the speed options independently instead of having to cycle them.Fixed Thunder missing when it's raining.Fixed Solarbeam graphic when the speed is not x1Fixed Doubleslap not being removed from the target in certain occations.Added an Opening Song to the game!

Alright let's get down to business. Another successful week of Sam and Dan Games has passed and a new one is now beginning. Not sure if you guys noticed but on the new level, Saffron City, there is a Mewtwo in the end and he works in a very interesting way. He is the first pokemon to have simple AI. Usually I'm limited to having the enemy only use one move but I for mewtwo I wanted to make him a little smarter. The way he works is that if his health is low he will switch to the move Recover. If he is missing any defense buffs he will switch to that and if non of the above are needed he will use his attack. You can expect enemies to have some simple AI kinda like Mewtwo has in newer levels.

The next update is v5.0 and I wanted to do something special for it since well it's v5! What can be more special than Multiplayer? Well nothing! So v5.0 will have a multiplayer map that you will be able to play. Now multiplayer is something that is not so simple to make. We have to take it one tiny step at a time. For one the service that I use to host multiplayer charges based on bandwidth use. Now the avatar chat was a test to see how much bandwidth would be used by something simple like a chat room. On a really active day the chat will use about 1GB of bandwidth which is actually quite a bit. Now imagine a multiplayer mode of the game with people playing constantly. Yeah it's going cost a bit. In fact I think a fully working multiplayer mode that is free (meaning no restrictions to only paid users) would easily be over 1,000 dollars a month to keep up. Right now the plan I'm in I pay 25 dollars a month for the multiplayer (avatar chat servers) so let's see how far our plan can go. If we go over the bandwidth limit of the account I will have to shut down the multiplayer for the month or limit access in some way.

Besides that the first multiplayer map will be a simple attack/defend map. One player will attack and the other will defend. To start with everybody will have a preset team available to them but eventually you will have your team available to you for use in multiplayer.

The thing about multiplayer is that it's going to take more than a week so this week the update is going to look really empty because I'll mainly be working on multiplayer and that will take more than a week. So this weekend I will release v4.9.5 and then the week after we will get v5.0. This also allows me to rest a little. It's been a lot of back to back updates with little to no rest in between. So even the great Sam gets tired ;)

Multiplayer - First map (0%)- This is for next week!Distribution (0%) Allow players to change their password in the pokemon center (100%) - You will have to supply your own email and password in order to change them to prevent hackers from changing it.Level Cap Raised to 66 (100%) New Mystery Gift Pokemon (100%)

Graphics (100%)

Shiny Graphics (100%)

New Moves (100%)

Dragon Pulse (100%)

Implement Stats on the game (100%)

Implement TM/Relearn Moves (100%)

Implement on Trading Center (100%)

New Evolutions (100%)

Graphics (100%)

Shiny Graphics (100%)

Implement Stats on the game (100%)

Added pokemon attacks to the trading center pokemon (100%)- Thanks Nssvelocity!Added Shiny Icons to the Trading Center so you can identify shiny pokemon easier (100%) Added a better description to Silver Wind (100%) - It wasn't missing buffs, the attack excludes accuracy and evasion. Changed the attack text.Added Hydro Pump as a TM (only usable after you beat Saffron City) (100%)When a pokemon faints don't remove him from your party turn their button red, except on the 3rd challenge level (100%) - Thanks George C and others that suggested this in the past!Haze not removing the accuracy drop (100%)-Thank to all that reminded me of this.Fixed Stealth Rock being able to miss (100%) - Thanks Justin for letting me know!Fixed a bug with Trading Poliwhirl for Jynx (100%) - Thanks Micah and others for letting me know!Highlight which speed and zoom you are currently in (100%) - Thanks all who suggested this!Added Dig as a TM (only usable after you beat Pewter Gym) (100%) Fixed Sand Tomb not showing the correct weakness color (100%) - Thanks MagZ!Added Dark Pulse as a TM (only usable after you beat Saffron City) (100%) - Thanks Jarret!Fixed not being able to put secondary type Flying types into Flying only spots (100%) - Thanks Arturo!Added a better description to Moves that can cause instant KO, detailing that they won't hit pokemon higher level than you. (100%)Fixed Harden being misspelled in the Trading Center (100%)Added a minor security fix (100%) - Nothing to see here, move along.Added a star next to shiny pokemon in the Pokemon Center (100%) Fixed a typo on the move Acrobatics (100%) - Thanks Daniel!Fixed an issue with prize pokemon (100%) Fixed an issue with not being able to request a pokemon past level 62 in the Pokemon Center (100%) - Thanks Anon! Fixed an issue with moves like Fire Blast, Shadow Ball, and Zap Cannon from working properly in faster speeds (100%)

Just wanted to thank you guys again for all the support, even if you just started playing and visit us or if you were here since the cap was level 10. I personally could not have made it this far without you guys. Thanks! As always let me know what you think!

In this post I want to go over some ideas regarding different types of maps in HTD.

I've mentioned before that HTD will have both defense and offense when it comes to gameplay. Some maps will be full defense like traditional TD games while other maps are offense. There will probably be some with mix of both to varius degrees. There will also be the usual waves made up of different types of enemies but also bosses that you have to move your characters around in order to attack and avoid certain attacks. Another fun way to beat maps is to require you to survive for a certain amount of time or require you to solve a puzzle-type problem. It'd also be cool for some maps to have multiple options available for completing it or having things you could trigger. For example have you destroy some support for a bunch of rocks and they cause one of the enemy paths to be blocked, etc.

All of the things mentioned above allow us to have a lot of flexibility for making some cool maps in HTD. When I play a game I always like having some variety so things don't get so repetitive and this allows us to do that. The maps will probably vary in size as well with larger ones not fitting on the whole screen when you are viewing it at 100%. However, there will be controls for you to zoom in and how to get a better idea of what's happening on the majority of the map. Some maps might even require you to split up your party in order to cover multiple areas of the same map instead of having them all in the same general spot and able to assist eachother.

With HTD being on a bit of a larger scale and having a more progressive nature the majority of the maps will probably be connected in some way, like having zones. For example, if you enter a cave it won't be just one map unless it's a very small cave. Instead it'll consist of multiple maps each one leading to another sending you further into the cave. There might even be some branching that takes affect in these caves so you would end up doing some exploring in the process.

I realize having maps set up like this can be a bit of hinderance when all you want to do is travel somewhere but we'll definitely have ways available to make traveling easier and more convenient. Think about it like an RPG in this instance. Traveling usually becomes easier as you become more powerful and acquire more money, mounts, and abilities.

On that note I'll leave you with an image that gives you an idea of what a finished map looks like:

A Finished Map

So let me know what you guys think in the comments and check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for more HTD artwork!

Note: As some of you have noticed, we are now looking to have the first playable version of HTD out by late December. Keep in mind this will be like version 0.1. In other words, it'll just have some of the core mechanics and other things for you to play around with. We like to release the games when they are very early in development in order to give you guys as many chances as possible to participate in helping us make the game and for us to gather feedback every step of the way. Thanks!